III. The Early Renaissancee (1350-1500)

IIIg. The Frottolists and their contemporaries.

Italian creative ability in the field of
music seems to have declined after the first quarter of the
quattrocento,
not to recover its vitality for some fifty years. As far as we
can now tell,
Bartolomeo Brolo
was the only Italian composer of consequence active during
this interval. However, in the 1470's a new blossoming of
native composition occurred. At about the same time the
recently invented art of printing was applied to monophonic
music. Early in the 16th century it was also applied, on a
large scale, to polyphony. Since much of the polyphonic music
that was printed then dated from the later decades of the 15th
century, our sources for the art forms of that period include
early prints as well as MSS.

Among the most important of these sources
are the prints of secular music published by
Ottaviano de'
Petrucci
, especially, for present purposes, those devoted to Italian
music. Whatever the contribution of Michel de Toulouze may have
been, Petrucci is the man whose position as a printer of music
is analogous to that of Gutenberg as a printer of books. Even
though Petrucci was not the first to print music or even the
first to do so from movable type, he was the earliest to
accomplish printing in an important way with respect to music
other than plainsong. Printed music naturally gained wider
circulation than MSS. The appeal to a larger audience is
reflected in Petrucci's departing from custom by providing
solutions to verbal canons.

The
frottola
and Related Types

The term
frottola
(derived from
frocta
--"a 'mixture' of unrelated thoughts and facts") has been used
in both a generic and a specific sense, with resulting
confusion. For example,
Petrucci
, in his
Frottole . . . Libro Quarto,
included
strambotti, ode,
and sonnets, as well as
frottole
proper. He did, however, separate the categories in the table
of contents. Almost all the Italian secular poetic forms of the
period from c. 1470 to 1530--i.e., the forms just mentioned
plus the
capitolo
and
canzone
--were covered by the designation, used generically. These
pieces replaced the
rondeau
and
bergerette
in the favor of courtly circles, especially in northern and
central Italy. They are, in fact, every bit as much
formes fixes
as the
rondeau
,etc. It is strange to find them coming into fashion in Italy
just when the
formes fixes
were dying out in the north.

The birthplace of the new art was Mantua,
with the courts of Ferrara and Urbino playing auxiliary roles.
Of the several factors favorable to its growth, the most
formative was undoubtedly the patronage of the highly
intelligent marchioness of Mantua, Isabella d'Este, daughter of
Hercules I of Ferrara, niece of Beatrice of Aragon, and music
student of
Johannes
Martini
. Like most women of her circle, she had received instruction
in dancing as well as in music, but unlike them, she made the
arts an integral part of life rather than a superficial one. In
what was once her study in the ducal palace at Mantua,
Ockeghem
's
Prennez sur moi
may be found worked out in marquetry. Many of the great artists
of Italy stood on terms of mutual respect and friendship with
her. Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Castiglione paid her
homage. Ariosto (in
Orlando furioso
) called her "that friend of illustrious works . . . liberal
and magnanimous Isabella."

The recitation of poetry was completely
enjoyable to Isabella and her circle only when given a musical
setting. Serafino dall'Aquila (d. 1500), the leading poet of
strambotti,
served at Mantua at the height of his fame, in 1494. Like many
poets of the time, he was skilled in singing verses to his own
accompaniment on the lute. Some of the anonymous settings of
his
strambotti
that have come down to us may well be based on his own
performances, a number, no doubt, being his own compositions.
After Serafino, the most prolific poet of amorous lyrics was
Galeotto del Carretto (c. 1470-1530). He was one of the
numerous authors who regularly sent verses to Isabella to have
them set to music by one of the two great frottolists at her
court.

These composers,
Bartolomeo
Tromboncino
and
Marco Cara
, were the direct cause of Mantua's renown as the center of the
new art. Their fame was already high when, c. 1495, they began
their activity at Isabella's court. Tromboncino, who was a man
of stormily emotional temperament, often found himself in
trouble, eventually murdering his unfaithful wife and her
lover. In time, however, his talent earned him forgiveness even
for this.

On the whole, very little is known
concerning the Italian frottolists. We are not even certain of
the place of origin of Filippo da Luprano, one of the most
prolific.
Michele Pesenti
(not to be confused with Michele Vicentino, also a frottolist)
and Giovanni Brocco were from Verona. Antonio Capriolli came
from Brescia.
Francesco d'Ana
was, at first, organist at San Leonardo in Venice, and then
from August 20, 1490, second organist at St. Mark's.
Lodovico Fogliano
, whose
Musica theorica
(1529) comes much closer to propounding the system of just
intonation than did, the earlier treatise of Ramos, composed,
as did his brother,
Giacomo
. Many other names could be added, for compositions of the
frottola
family were written by laymen and priests, nobles and
commoners alike.

The style of such compositions was half
popular, half aristocratic. Popular tunes were often used, but
in a manner designed to please the cultivated listener. Such
material attracted the frottolists as "an object of mirth and
mockery, though also of a secret yearning to descend into the
lower sphere of supposed vulgarity." They incorporated into
their pieces the beginnings of many popular songs and the
complete versions of others. Sometimes a frottolist was, in the
old tradition, both poet and composer.

The melodic line of the typical
frottola
has small range and many repeated notes. The contrast to the
Franco-Netherlandish style is striking at the cadences (other
than the last), where the feminine rhymes so prevalent in
Italian are set to repeated notes (rarely to a step or leap).
The contrast is heightened by the Italian fondness for
clear-cut phrases, in which all voices begin and end together.
Cantus firmi,
in the very few instances in which they occur, may lie in any
voice.

The general trend after 1510, as evidenced
by the contents of successive
frottola
books, was in favor of the more serious forms, the
canzone,
sonnet, and
oda.
The last known printed collection of
frottole
appeared in 1533, but their essence nevertheless continued
alive in other forms. The lighter types of
frottola
developed into the
villanesca,
while the more serious forms were infused with
Franco-Netherlandish style trends to bring forth the madrigal.

Sacred Music; the
Laude

Although
Tromboncino
,
Cara
, and their fellow frottolists were essentially composers of
secular music, they wrote some church music also.
Petrucci
printed two collections of
Lamentations of Jeremiah,
both in 1506, and Trom- boncino,
Weerbecke
and
Erasmus
Lapicida
are represented by settings in Book II. Book I, which contains
some material other than Lamentations, ends with a
Passio sacra,
not a real Passion despite its opening word, by
Francesco d'Ana

Canti Carnascialeschi

The
canti carnascialeschi
or carnival songs, or, as they are sometimes called, the
Florentine
frottole
, were sung in Florence during the carnival season.

The
Sacre Rappresentazioni,
etc.

If the
canti carnascialeschi,
performed before Lent and some time after Easter, in the
Calendimaggio,
were of a frivolous nature, more serious matter was provided
for performance during Lent by the
sacre rappresentazioni.
These religious plays derived from two sources. One was the
type of
devozione
(or dramatized
lauda
) that was an enactment, as a play in verse, of the events of
Holy Thursday and Good Friday. (There were also
devozioni
associated with Christmas.) The custom of offering these
presentations had spread throughout trecento Italy. The other
source was the elaborate celebration in Florence of the feast
of her patron saint, John the Baptist. This was celebrated
yearly with processions--which included cars decorated to
represent religious subjects--and with tableaux and mimes on
specially erected stages in all the public squares. Such
spectacles might include a Resurrection, with a tomb bursting
open with a loud explosion, or an Assumption of the Virgin by
singing angels. The spoken drama of the
devozione
and the mimetic and musical spectacles of the feast of St. John
fused into the
sacra rappresentazione.

The
rappresentazioni
were usually enacted in church--and even here with the aid of
spectacular scenic effects. Brunelleschi designed a Heaven in
the vaults of a certain church, with doors that rolled back
with a sound like thunder to reveal the Eternal Father
enthroned in glory among the heavenly host.

Instrumental Music

The scarcity of instrumental music
surviving from 15th-century Italy might cause us to
underestimate its importance in its day. But literary sources
show that it was used often-in church services, festivities,
receptions, social gatherings. For example, at the celebration
of the wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla of Aragon at
Pesaro in 1475, the guests heard not only two antiphonal
choruses of sixteen singers each, but
"organi, pifferi, trombetti ed infiniti tamburini."
When Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, went to Florence in
1471, he took along forty players of "high" instruments. The
nobility retained numerous instrumentalists to accompany their
singers and to render solos and ensemble music. Instrument
collections in the various palaces included lutes, viols,
harps, flutes, etc.

The
sacre rappresentazioni
were preceded by instrumental preludes, which followed the
prologue. Pictures show children playing instruments in the
performance of such dramas; there is evidence also of a
children's instrumental ensemble functioning at Ferrara in
1472.

Beginning with the 14th century, and
perhaps earlier, bands of wind instruments had been employed by
such cities as Florence and Lucca. Civic records include
references to trumpeters, pifferi, and bagpipe players, The
usual wind band seems to have had about eight or nine players.

The oldest print of Italian organ music
extant dates from 1517 but many collections of such music must
have existed in the 14th century; an inventory of the Cathedral
Library at Treviso mentions a
"liber pro organis"
as far back as 1364-1.

The oldest Florentine organ of which we
know was built c. 1299. Beginning with the trecento, the fame
of Tuscan organ builders spread through the peninsula. Venice
produced a great builder in Fra Urbano, who constructed a
famous organ for St. Mark's in 1490 and remained active at
least forty years. This instrument was added to the earlier
organ there, so that the
quattrocento
saw Venice able to boast of antiphonal organ-playing, a
position shared by Naples. At Brescia, the Antegnati family
achieved a fame they were to maintain through four generations.
In addition, numerous Germans and Frenchmen competed in Italy
with native organ builders.

Fifteenth-century Florence, as we have
seen, was the home of the celebrated organist
Squarcialupi
and a place where
Isaac
played organ likewise. We have the names of several
quattrocento organists active at St. Mark's.
Francesco d'Ana
's service as organist at St. Mark's has already been noted.

Stringed keyboard-instruments were favored
in the home, especially, it would seem, in the accompaniment of
frottole
. Some late 15th-century makers of cembali, etc., are known by
name. The Antegnati, famous in the 16th century not only for
their organs but also for their lutes and viols, may deserve
credit for the high standing of Brescia as a lute- and
viol-making center from c. 1495 on.
Tinctoris
states that the viol was used generally "for the accompaniment
and ornamentation of vocal music and in connection with the
recitation of epics." But 15th-century Italy no doubt saw it
used also independently and in viol and mixed ensembles.

Dance Music

The keyboard music mentioned above
consists of transcriptions of vocal music. Transcriptions as
well as imitations of such music constitute one of the three
main categories of Renaissance instrumental music, the other
two being dance and improvised music (the last category
overlapping the other two and the second overlapping the
first). Examples of 15th-century dance music survive in the
Italian dance treatises of the time. These examples are
monophonic. Domenico of Piacenza, dance master at Ferrara,
whose pupils spread his art all over Italy shortly after 1450,
was clearly a central figure. Among his disciples was Guglielmo
Ebreo of Pesaro (perhaps identical with Giovanni Ambrogio da
Pesaro ) who taught at Florence and whose book is one of
several known Italian dance manuals of the period. It includes
a number of tunes as well as choreographic directions for many
dances, two of which are credited to Lorenzo de' Medici and
many to Domenico. Another dance theorist of the time whose
treatise likewise includes tunes is Antonio Cornazano.